Bob Steele will discuss and sign copies of his first novel The Curse: Big-Time Gambling’s Seduction of a Small New England Town Monday, April 29 in the auditorium of the Silas Bronson Library at 6:30 p.m.
The story begins in 1637 with the massacre of the Pequot Indians and a curse delivered by a Pequot sachem to the young English soldier who is about to kill him. Fast forward 350 years when the soldier’s thirteenth-generation descendant, Josh Williams, becomes embroiled in a battle to stop a newly-minted Indian tribe from building a third casino that threatens his town and ancestral home. The lure of easy money drives everyone from the tribe’s chief to a shadowy Miami billionaire, venal politicians, and Providence mobsters, while a small, quintessential New England town must choose between preserving its character or accepting an extraordinary proposal that will change it forever.
As the battle over the casino reaches a climax, Josh discovers startling truths about his family’s past – including centuries-old events that appear to be impacting the present with devastating effect.
Connecticut author Martin Shapiro (Scroll of Naska) has described the book as “compelling and timely – an epic story of politics, identity and greed that will make you wonder where America is headed.”
A graduate of Amherst College and Columbia University, Robert H. Steele is vice chairman of an international retail marketing agency and has been a director of numerous companies. He has served in the CIA and Congress, representing the 2nd District when he lived in Ledyard next to the Mashantucket Pequot Reservation. “I moved to Ledyard in 1977 and lived there for 21 years, all during the period of the events leading to the casinos,” he says. “It is one of the most remarkable stories in Connecticut history and I had a front row seat.” He has since moved to Essex.
If the name Bob Steele seems familiar, it’s also because he is the son of the late Robert Lee “Bob” Steele, WTIC radio personality for more than 66 years.